


Rumour Has It

by Asynca



Series: Ready, Set, Go! - Speed Prompts [25]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 09:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9173017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Overwatch has fallen, and the media is full of terrible lies about the work of Dr Angela Ziegler. Speed prompt, written in 65 minutes.





	

Blanket around her middle, early morning sun shining in from their bedroom window, Angela sat up in bed. Her phone had been ringing off the hook with notifications all night; she couldn’t bring herself to look at them. Instead, she took a deep breath, reaching out with shaking hands to touch ‘play’ on the holovid she’d opened in from of her.  

A reporter’s solemn face popped up. Before she’d even opened her mouth, Angela’s heart was pounding. “Disgraced organisation Overwatch—decommissioned by the United Nations itself after the truth was leaked by brave unknown sources—has been found to have conducted extensive medicals experiments on _innocent people_.”

Beside her, Fareeha turned over in bed. “Don’t do this, Angela,” she said, touching Angela’s cool arm with her hand that was warm from the blankets. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

But Angela couldn’t look away. She couldn’t. She just listened to the so-called ‘news’. “Reports were made available to this news stations showing _extensive_ medical experimentation on subjects identified simply as numbers—a practice likened to the events in Nazi Germany last century—”

Angela’s lips were pressed in a tight, thin line. This reporter had _no idea_ what she was talking about; Angela’s family had lost nearly an entire generation last century. Her ears were ringing.

Fareeha knew this. “—Angela, please. Turn it off, it doesn’t help you to—”

“I need to know, Fareeha.”

It didn’t stop. “…Ironically enough, the experiments were actually carried out by a doctor whose family was originally German before they moved to Switzerland last century, Doctor Angela Zeigler, a woman who newspapers have now dubbed ‘Dr Death’ because of the reports identifying how many of the people she experimented died as a result of her cruel torture, and—”

Angela couldn’t hold her breath any longer. “They died because of the _war_ , you idiots!” She hissed at the screen. The reporter just kept droning on in the background as Angela shouted at her. “They died because everyone is still fighting each other, and I couldn’t save them because you _took away my research based on nothing but hearsay and rumours_!” It wasn’t fair; she could fear tears welling in her eyes.

Fareeha’s hand reached up and switched off the video. “Angela, please don’t—”

“ _How dare they_?”

“It’s just tabloid media, people will forget that—”

“Just— _how dare they_?” Angela was _shaking_. She turned to Fareeha. “I dedicated my whole life to _eradicating_ death! To making sure parents returned home to their children, that grandparents would live to see four beautiful generations of their family, to making sure that no child—no child ever—would ever lie awake at night with no one to tuck them in, or tell them that they love them, or make sure that—”

“Angela…” Fareeha sat up in bed, putting an arm around her. “I know that. You know that. Anyone who matters in the medical community knows that, don’t listen to—”

“And now 10 billion people in the world thing I’m a _monster_!”

“I don’t think they really believe this. No one would believe that—”

“Fifty newspapers. Every news station…” Angela tabbed through the menu of the holovid, showing Fareeha the headlines. “All of them are about _Dr Death_.”

“Angela…”

She knew Fareeha was only trying to help. But she felt sick, so sick. She could hardly breath. What had she done to deserve this? She couldn’t bear it any longer. “I’m getting up,” she said neutrally, and went to have a shower.

The warm water didn’t feel as good as it usually did. Angela could see her reflection in the shower screen; bags under her eyes. Sallow skin—she hadn’t slept properly in days. How could she, when people were saying such horrible things about her? When people _believed_ these things without even questioning them?

She dressed mechanically. She ate her breakfast; cold, chewy toast. Her coffee was bitter, and at the breakfast table—a place where she’d normally read her emails and watch the news—she just stared at the table in front of her. _‘Dr Death eats breakfast, contemplates new evil scheme_ ’, she imagined the newspapers saying about her staring at the table like this. She couldn’t finish her toast.

Behind her, she could feel Fareeha lingering in doorways, watching her. Wanting to help. “Can I do anything to—”

“No.” She paused. “Thank you. No.” Fareeha eventually gave up hovering and went to do something else.

After her breakfast, Angela would normally get to work; reading the latest research, following up on correspondence. She didn’t think she could do that today. Her phone was still going—message after message, notification after notification. Everyone wanted a piece of Dr Death, it seemed. _I’ll have to get a new number_ , I thought; she’d had this one for twenty years.

After a few minutes of watching her phone light up nonstop, she pulled her phone in front of her on the table, staring down at it. The little notification panel was full. A little red ‘ _4677_ ’ was above her email inbox.

 _Apparently, 4677 people want to tell me what they think of me_ , she realised, watching that number tick to 4678, 4679, 4680. She wondered what they were saying.

Fareeha would tell her not to do it, and that she should delete the messages and throw away her phone. Fareeha was always so strong on that point: what matters is what you do, because on Judgement Day—Angela knew she quoted her mother on this one—Allah would weigh her deeds against her actual deeds, not what people said about her.

It was good, practical advice. But Angela never had been very good at taking Fareeha’s advice.

4681.

4682.

How had so many people gotten her private number, she wondered? As far as she was aware, no one outside the medical community or any of the odd patients she’d attended over the years had it. Someone had probably doxed her, she decided. That was likely; she knew there were some powerful people with terribly technological know-how out there.

4683.

Morbidly, she wondered if she could reach 5000 by the end of the morning. 5000 people sending hateful messages to Dr Death. Maybe she’d even make 10,000 by dinner?

4684.

She wondered what people would have to say about her; if they were truly comparing her to the Nazis, and if they did, if they knew she was Jewish herself.

4685.

She couldn’t stop thinking about that, though. About the awful comparison. About the haunting photos she’d seem of the emptiness in her great-great-grandmother’s eyes, how people said her great-great-grandmother couldn’t answer the phone because every time the phone rang, she thought it was _them_. That _they’d_ found her. How her throat would close over and she’d stand paralysed and stare at it, trapped in a different time. How the damn tabloid media had _no idea_.

4686.

 _Well, damn them_ , Angela thought vehemently. _Damn them all_.

Fuelled by bitterness and a sense of horrible, painful injustice, she reached out and tapped the little red numbers, opening another window in her holovid.

“Let’s see what you’re all saying about Dr Death,” she said flatly, feeling sick.

There were _so many emails_. Even other doctors were emailing her, random people, names she didn’t recognise, some names she did. It was all about the news, she could see that from the subject lines. And it was all so, so sarcastic. So much hate.

Feeling sick to her stomach, she opened the first one, the one at the top of the list.

Mouth dry and heart pounding, she braced herself to read the words she knew she was going to. She prepared herself to read that barrage of lies, to _feel_ the hatred seeping from every word they said.

“ _Dear Dr Ziegler_ ,” it began. Her stomach was in knots as she kept reading. “ _You probably don’t remember me. You operated on me about ten years ago when I was bleeding out after being shot. I saw the reports about the terrible things you’ve done today. I sat and watched all of them from beginning to end, about how you’d killed people and experimented on people and pretended to be this innocent, sweet lady when you’re a terrible person, and I want you to know that I don’t believe a word that they’re saying. I’m alive because of you. Last year, my wife had our first child and every time I look at her beautiful sleeping face I’m thankful to you for saving me._ ”

Angela sat back.

She had to read that again. And again, looking for the barb. Looking for the hidden nastiness she’d expected, but she couldn’t find one.

Stunned, she opened the next letter.

“ _Dear Dr Ziegler_ ,” it read. It had clearly been typed by a child. “ _Thank you for saving mummy from the soldiers. She can walk really good now! I put a photo here for you to see._ ” Attached was a photo of a woman Angela remembered operating on in the field last year. It was a Christmas photo; the woman had a crutch under one arm and a Christmas tree behind her. There was a little girl with a big gap-toothed grin wrapped around her waist. The woman was smiling, and holding a sign that said ‘Thank you, Dr Ziegler’. It had been cross-posted to social media.

Angela swallowed.

When she tabbed down the list, her eyes jumped to a familiar name.

Genji. “ _Dear Angela,_ ” it began. It had been hand written on a screen. “ _Pay no attention to the media, it is poison. Take some time away from the news and the papers to reflect on what you know to be true, what we all know to be true about you. I have said some awful things to you in the past, but now I am truly grateful to you for giving me another chance; another opportunity to save myself. I have taken it, and I am happy now. That is partly your doing, Angela. Thank you_.”

She tabbed down the list, scrolling and scrolling. Each message read like this. All of them. One after another, filled with joy and hope she’d given people.

She tabbed down the list, opening message after message, waiting for the shoe to fall, for the ‘trick’ to be apparently.

But there wasn’t a trick. The ‘thank you’ subject lines weren’t sarcasm. People weren’t mocking her, or insulting her, or hating her. It was all genuine.

Despite everything, in her darkest hour, 4686 people had sent her beautiful, heartfelt messages to thank her for saving them. So many children who still had parents because of her; so many families still whole, still in one piece because of her. So many lives saved and lives touched.

Every message. Every one of them.

She closed her email windows, put her head in her hands and _cried_. 

 

 

 

 


End file.
